Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
The "Green Dragon"--Tompion and Pinchbeck--The _Record_--St. Bride's
and its Memories--_Punch_ and his Contributors--The _Dispatch_--The
_Daily Telegraph_--The "Globe Tavern" and Goldsmith--The _Morning
Advertiser_--The _Standard_--The _London Magazine_--A Strange
Story--Alderman Waithman--Brutus Billy--Hardham and his "37."
The original "Green Dragon" (No. 56, south) was destroyed by the Great
Fire, and the new building set six feet backward. During the Popish Plot
several anti-papal clubs met here; and from the windows Roger North
stood to see the shouting, torch-waving procession pass along, to burn
the Pope's effigy at Temple Bar. In the "Discussion Forum" many Lord
Chancellors of the future have tried their eloquence. It was celebrated
some years ago from an allusion to it made by Napoleon III.
At No. 67 (corner of Whitefriars Street) once lived that famous
watchmaker of Queen Anne's reign, Thomas Tompion, who is said, in 1700,
to have begun a clock for St. Paul's Cathedral which was to go one
hundred years without winding up. He died in 1713. His apprentice,
George Graham, invented, as Mr. Noble tells us, the horizontal
escapement, in 1724. He was succeeded by Mudge and Dutton, who, in 1768,
made Dr. Johnson his first watch. The old shop was (1850) one of the
last in Fleet Street to be modernised.
Between Bolt and Johnson's courts (152-166, north)--say near "Anderton's
Hotel"--there lived, in the reign of George II., at the sign of the
"Astronomer's Musical Clock," Christopher Pinchbeck, an ingenious
musical-clockmaker, who invented the "cheap and useful imitation of
gold," which still bears his name. (Watt's, in his "Dictionary of
Chemistry," says "pinchbeck" is an alloy of copper and zinc, usually
containing about nine parts copper to one part zinc. Brandt says it is
an alloy containing more copper than exists in brass, and consequently
made by fusing various proportions of copper with brass.) Pinchbeck
often exhibited his musical automata in a booth at Bartholomew Fair,
and, in conjunction with Fawkes the Conjuror, at Southwark Fair. He
made, according to Mr. Wood, an exquisite musical clock, worth about
L500, for Louis XIV., and a fine organ for the Great Mogul, valued at
L300. He died in 1732. He removed to Fleet Street (between Bolt and
Johnson's courts, north side) from Clerkenwell in 1721. His clocks
played tunes and imitated the notes of birds. In 1765 he set up, at the
Queen's House, a clock with four faces, showing the age of the moon, the
day of the week and month, the time of sun rising, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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